Wednesday, October 28, 2009

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After heading into the deliberation room more than a week earlier, a Santa Barbara jury emerged Monday afternoon with a verdict, finding Steven Neff guilty of two counts of attempted sexual penetration with enhancements to the crime that could land him 25 years in state prison when he is sentenced next month.

Neff was accused of injecting two women-one he knew and one he didn’t-with Ketamine, and assaulting them sexually while they were unconscious. The verdict meant the jury ultimately didn’t believe Neff, who took the stand in his own defense. According to prosecutor Ron Zonen, Neff probably hurt more than he helped himself when he testified.

His decision to take the stand-made against the advice of his attorney Michael Hanley as well as the advice of Hanley’s boss-opened the door for Zonen to get into grossly stunning details about Neff’s thoughts and personal life that the jury, though already privy to a multitude of sickening facts and allegations, hadn’t yet heard. “I thought it worked better for me,” Zonen said. “He didn’t fare well on cross examination.”

With Neff taking the stand, Zonen was able to introduce as evidence several journals and calendars in which Neff took meticulous notes, often writing down thoughts and dreams, as well as documenting his habitual masturbating. Included were entries about dreams during which he would spy on his girlfriend and later rape her, as well as an incident when he orgasmed while watching a rape scene from a television soap opera.

But it wasn’t his disturbing thoughts, but two actual attacks on women in 2002 that ultimately got Neff in trouble. The first was on a then-20-year-old woman who was running on the beach. Though a sexual assault examination proved inconclusive, a lot of sand was found down her pants, and a small amount of Neff’s sperm was found on her running pants. Neff admitted injecting the woman with the drug, but denied even pulling down the victim’s pants. He said that in an adrenaline rush caused by the attack he masturbated through his athletic shorts over her unconscious body, which resulted in the discovery of his DNA on her pants.

The second attack came in his apartment against a coworker of his. The victim testified that after the two had drunk alcohol and smoked marijuana, she felt a pain in her neck and quickly lost her ability to function. She told jurors she believed Neff bound her limbs and hit her, gave her an enema, and then smeared what she believed to be her own feces on her own face and his. Neff denied any wrongdoing against his co-worker.

Complicating the case for the defense is the fact that both victims had a difficult time recollecting what actually took place. “That was a problem we had to deal with,” Zonen explained.

Jurors wrestled with both cases in their deliberations, re-watching a video of the beach victim’s sexual assault examination, while re-listening to the entirety of the co-worker’s earlier testimony on the stand. “It was a painstaking process,” one juror said. “But when it was said and done we came to the verdict. They were both difficult cases.”

On the stand Neff also admitted in his testimony that he attacked two other women, one a French tourist on East Beach and the other a skier on Mammoth Mountain, injecting both of them with Ketamine. He wasn’t charged in those crimes because the statute of limitations had expired by the time he was connected to the series of crimes in 2006.

Neff, who sat solemnly in his chair, shoulders slumping when the verdict was read, told the jury that three attacks on women were the result of a storyline he, a writer, had created in his head and was acting out. In this story he was the protagonist whose goal it was to travel the world, surfing and snowboarding along the way. To fund his endless journey, he said, he would find women tourists near hotels, inject them with Ketamine, steal their room keys, enter their room, and take their credit cards and valuables.

I am puzzled that that the statute of limitations is so short when the crime is forcibly injecting another with a drug! It could be as deadly as shooting another with a bullet. The needle and/or substance could be contaminated, the needle could stab an artery or other vunerable internal part, the drug could be lethal if the victim is allergic to it or the dose is above a certain level or if it is incompatible with a medication the victim is taking...there are so many reasons to regard this crime as being as serious as a gunshot or any attempted murder. Very weird and unsettling. I would guess that the jury found him guilty, not because they were convinced that he penetrated the victims sexually, but because he admitted to these dangerous and potentially lethal attacks.

I do not know why attacking a woman or children in any manner is not a capital offense punishable by death. These perverts need to be rooted out of our society. There should be no compassion for a man that abandons his mother, sister, aunt, wife lover, daughter... to sexual perversion.

Let me get this straight... This guy confesses to injecting women with animal tranquilizer and acting out unspeakable perversities in addition to raping them, and all he gets is 25 years? I hope that it comes to 25 years per incident, because that sentence doesn't seem to be in the best interest of public safety. This is a very, very dangerous man who, at the very least, should never again see the outside of a correctional institution.

The piece of crap gives animals a bad name. Only a human could do such vicous acts. We can only hope the state of California does the right thing and throws this master manipulator is prison for life. This sociopath wasno different during his junior and high school years. I can only feel sorrow for the countless individuals who let this serial con-artist into their lives. I suspect many will have sleepness nights on the choices they have made. For this reason alone he desevers never to be a free man. The state of California should be charging him for every breath of air he breaths.